She cannot help but think that all along, her father had always wished for a son.
A son to be his heir, to carry on the family name. A son he can spar with, a son upon whom he can bestow the secrets of life. A son to bring the clan honour, a son to make him proud.
All of this, she is not.
So she trains, trains and pushes herself, tests her limits and breaks them just to see how far she can go. Look at me, Papa, she yearns to say, look at me. Are you proud of me?
Of course, she never expresses any of these. Everything soft and feminine – her emotions, her fears, her dreams, all half-formed and half-realised – are banished to the back of her mind, never to see the light of day as she struggles to live up to the elusive image of whatever her father expects her to be.
She can kick harder than any of his acolytes, throw shurikens further and faster than any of his apprentices. She can disguise herself better than a Kecleon, seamlessly blending into whatever scenario he throws at her, altering her face, her voice, her mannerisms to suit the situation at hand. She can rouge her cheeks, let down her hair and put on airs and graces and pretend to be a beguiling maiden, or bind her chest and adopt a confident swagger and guttural accent to pass as an uncouth fisher-boy. She can move as quietly as a ghost, making less sound than falling leaves. She can awaken from the deepest slumber in the blink of an eye, ready for anything that can possibly happen. She can meditate on her head for longer than anyone else can, long after the boys have passed out from dizziness, long after they have given in to the savage pounding of blood rushing to their skulls.
When she takes his place as Fuchsia gym leader, she likes to think it is more because of her skills than her lineage, the blood-ties which dictate she should get ownership of his gym due to her being his successor. To reinforce this, she learns to fight better than any of her clan-kin who patrol the inner halls, learns to brew the most potent toxins and learns the names of all their antidotes. She learns how to daub a Crobat's wing-edges with poison so that they can unleash powerful attacks that will cripple even the most well-prepared opponents; she learns how to milk an Arbok and Seviper for their venom and dilute them to different concentrations for different uses.
She learns to make pellets of poison and smears needles with her concoctions, learns to conceal these subtle weapons about her person and use them even when she is physically incapacitated. She can hide them between her teeth, spit venom like a snake or slide toxic darts under an assailant's skin, leaving them paralysed – or worse. The whole world, in turn, learns never to underestimate her, Janine of Fuchsia, daughter of Koga.
She can do everything a son should be able to, and more.
But yet, she cannot stifle the vague idea – tentative, uncertain, weakly persistent – that her father wanted a son, a rough-and-ready boy-child he will never have to be wary of breaking.
When they train together, he always falls back to make sure she's coping, to make sure she can keep up. Can you go another four miles, lotus? he asks, the implications in his stern voice ringing in her ears, and she flinches away from his term of endearment for her. As much as she welcomes it, it is everything she strives not to be, an embodiment of female delicacy and frailty, and she wants none of it.
Yes, of course I can, she responds as stoutly as possible, despite the shortness of her breath, the fatigue which burns slowly and sluggishly in the coils of her aching muscles. Despite the weariness of her bones, the throb of painful knuckles swollen from gripping a chain-scythe for too long, she forces herself to go on, just so that at the end of the day, she will be rewarded by a gruff nod and a near-imperceptible crinkling of his eyes, an acknowledgment of her efforts from her father.
Another thing she wishes for – selfishly, perhaps – is to be the only female in his life.
It is a while before he can bring himself to distance himself from memories of his wife, and Janine feels guilty for wanting to deny her father the chance to feel the touch of a woman again.
But she wants to be his princess – no matter how foolish that sounds – and wants to be able to know that she's the only one who matters.
Blood is thicker than water, after all.
She tries to hide her disapproval of the women her father brings home, elegantly-coiffed ladies brimming with confidence and self-assurance, all in possession of a natural, airy grace and poise which she herself lacks. She is graceful in an entirely different way—when they walk, it looks as though they are floating; hers is the more functional kind of grace, the sort that allows her to land on her feet no matter how she falls, the sort which makes her sure-footed and confident even as she flits silently over ramshackle tin rooftops.
Their hands are soft and smooth and delicate, telltale signs of a life of leisure, whilst hers are rough and calloused from handling weapons and training Pokémon, marked in a thousand places by the scars of initiation of their clan.
One night, after his latest date has left for the evening, she makes her way towards the room where they receive guests and sits quietly alongside her father, a companionable silence settling between them like falling feathers.
"She seems like a pleasant one," Janine begins hesitantly, weighing each word carefully as she speaks.
Her father nods, a slow, regal dip of his head. "Better than some," he concedes evenly, as he takes a sip of his tea. He replaces the cup upon the table, and they watch as steam drifts forth from its contents, rising to the air in languid spirals.
"But—" She bites her lip, chewing ruminatively on the words which squirm in her mouth. They linger tentatively on the tip of her tongue, struggling to be voiced despite her misgivings, despite the beginnings of shame which stirs in the pit of her stomach.
Koga raises his eyebrows at her, a simple motion which she knows is meant to be her prompt to continue.
"They don't love you like I do," she blurts out, and is utterly mortified by what she says.
For an instant, she wishes for the floor to open up and swallow her whole—anything, anything, to be saved from her father's cold, impassive scrutiny. The image she has painstakingly tried to build up over the years is shattered with those seven simple words, seven little words which will remind her father of the fact that she's not a boy.
But she doesn't regret saying what she did. Nobody can possibly hope to emulate the bond they share, the blood ties which bind them closer than physical ties can ever hope to. After all, they are really all one another have left in the world.
She is unprepared for the smile which curves across his lips, shearing years away from his face. His expression softens and the lines across his forehead smooth out, and he bows his head, gently brushing his knuckles against the line of her jaw.
"I know, little lotus. I know."
Emboldened by this, she swallows, clears her throat, and raises her chin and meets his gaze squarely, with as much determination as she can muster. "Are you proud of me?"
She is aware of a fleeting glint in his eye, a momentary glimpse of something she has never seen before. Then, the veneer of impeccable calm slides back into place, and he leans forth to kiss her on the forehead.
"Nothing could make me prouder than being able to call you my daughter," he says quietly. "And I want you to know that no matter who you grow up to love in the future, nobody will love you like I do."
- - x x x x x - -
epilogue. Written for the Pokémon kink meme on LiveJournal. Usual disclaimers apply.